It’s hard to keep track of how many running text displays you run across nowadays. You can find them used as decorations in shop windows, as programmable signboards and as simple eye-catchers. If you buy one ready-made, however, it’s fairly expensive, and they are usually too complex for DIY construction. The running text display project in this article combines a simple and inexpensive design with repeatable construction and ease of use.The objective of the running text display project was to develop a simple, inexpensive design that would not be too difficult to build and would be easy to use. We intentionally decided not to make the display as large as possible or to implement a lot of different display modes, since these would require a powerful microcontroller or a singleboard computer. The result is a circuit that is controlled by an inexpensive National Semiconductor microcontroller with 4 kB of ROM, and which can be built using readily obtainable components.